The Internet Shifts East

Logic Bomb writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has an article discussing the World Intellectual Property Organization's prediction that in less than 10 years, Chinese will be the most widely-used language on the web. Assuming the Internet becomes a truly global entity, this is an obvious (and mathematically correct) conclusion. On the other hand, the implementation of the Internet in places without certain civil liberties provides an interesting challenge to typical Western (idealist) notions about what the Internet does for society. Would you even consider the average wealthy Chinese citizen with online access truly 'on the Internet'? And how is the Internet supposed to draw people together when the same old language barrier still exists?"

Comments

A little history lesson

[autopr0n]

Actually, after Mao died the Deng Xiaoping and his cohorts were pretty freaked out by what happened and they began to liberalize (in the British sense of the word... like free markets and the like) both economically (Deng actually had a slogan "It's not bad to get rich") and politically. But the Tiananmen Square massacre scared them shitless, especially when people other then students began to get involved. It was suppressed. And given the background (having experienced china in the 1940s and through Mao's crap... Deng had to endure a couple of struggle sessions himself) It's easy to see why they might have been afraid.

The problem is that when China looked around them to see what was successful they saw the Authoritarian capitalist states like Singapore, Korea and Taiwan. And they figured that it worked well. Taiwan has become a real democracy now though.

I think after the shock of Tiananmen wares off and things start to calm down again the restrictions will once again start to come off. Well I hope. Unlike Singapore, it's a pretty big country to hold with an iron fist.